Adora Octopus by Meg Lyman

Digital

for the Adora Art Project

When I have a commission for a digital end product, I ponder the pros and cons of illustrating digitally. I truly love painting and will avoid digital work like the plague, despite the fact that it’s cheaper and faster. In this case, the commission was for a website, so painted traditionally or digitally, the only thing the client needed was a .jpg. In other cases, like logo design, the product must be digital. Sometimes in these instances, even when I have the choice, I’ll pick traditional painting and scan it in. In this case, I didn’t have much time to finish it, and the subject wasn’t too complicated or serious (like I do anything serious), so I gave the digital painting a shot. It sure was quicker, and fun… but not nearly as fun as pushing paint around.

If illustration is your gig, digital painting give you a huge advantage. I just like getting paint under my fingernails too much to switch.

Logo for SquidRage Studios

Digital – done with Inkscape

I just returned from a trip around the state, having fun and painting. I’ll put up a compilation post soon. In the meantime, have a logo!

Digital art is difficult for me. I admit I do have have a tablet, which is way waaaaaaay better than a mouse, for both art and everything else computery. However… I can’t seem to get the lines I want from the stylus to the screen. It’s so frustrating. Holding the stylus is no different than holding a pen or brush. So what’s the deal?

There are two things, I think, that mess me up: 1. Not having direct feedback and 2. Size difference.

1. No direct feedback. I don’t mean that there’s no “pushback” from the pen – I know some people have problems with that, but the lack of texture on the tablet surface doesn’t bother me. I mean visual feedback. I can’t see the lines I’m drawing under my stylus; I have to watch the screen instead of my pen to see what I’m doing. It’s tougher to adjust your stroke when you can’t see where you are in relation to where you’ve been. However, this is not nearly as big an obstacle as…

2. Size does matter. The size of the tablet is fixed. Each corner of the tablet has a corresponding corner on the screen. The screen is a different size than the tablet. And the drawing area can be zoomed to any size within the screen.

It’s kinda hard to explain. Let’s say I want to draw a vertical line 500 pixels long. I have my “e-canvas” zoomed so all of it fits nicely on my screen. With my screen configured this way, that 500-pixel line will be, say, 5 inches long on the screen. My screen is 10 inches tall, so the line is half the screen. That means I’ll have to move my stylus half of the vertical height of my tablet… which is 6 inches tall. So I’m moving my stylus 3 inches to draw a line that is 5 inches tall on the screen.

And by changing the zoom level of my e-canvas, that 500-pixel line can become, say, 2.5  or 10 inches tall. Confusing, I know… but the bottom line is that  moving my stylus 3 inches and getting 5 inches on the screen really messes with my spacial reasoning.

Then I try to add curves… and tentacles and eyes… See my dilemma?